On November 2, 2022, Carme Junyent convened a group of women writers at the University of Barcelona to ask for their collaboration in a future collective book in which she proposed that they write, with or without fiction, a story about a daughter’s relationship with her father, inspired by the book Fathers: reflections by daughters published by Virago in 1983. The result is T’estimo com la sal (Vienna), which was presented on Monday at Ona with most of the authors of the stories, but with a notable absence: Junyent died last September, having left the work behind and having passed the baton as editor to Simona Škrabec, who remembered the whole process and remembered the Junyent’s thesis: that it is not easy to talk about the father or, even less, to kill the father. But he remembered a Serbian proverb: “If it has to be done, it’s not difficult”. And she told her story and took on the task at hand.

On stage, in addition to her, there was Marta Vives, as master of ceremonies, and Àngels Bassas, who read some samples of the texts, and among the audience they took the floor – after the editor Enric Viladot– Sílvia Soler, Marta Orriols, Gemma Sardà, Stefanie Kremser, Natàlia Cerezo, Marta Marín-Dòmine, Marta Romagosa, Gemma Asins, Ivet Zwatrzko i Pou, Irene Yúfera, Marta Pera Cucurell – that in the book, in addition to a text own, provides the translation of the traditional English tale Cap-de-jonc, one of the many existing versions of the tale that is known here precisely as T’estimo com la sal– and Francesca Llopis – author of the cover–. The book also contains contributions from Margarida Aritzeta, Lolita Bosch, Andrea Mayo, Júlia Ojeda Caba and Llucia Ramis, who could not be at the presentation, where there were, in the audience, Maria Barbal, Jordi Puntí, Carles Torner, Cinta Massip, Carme Fenoll, David Paloma, Carme Sansa or Manel Guerrero, in a bookstore full of readers.

On Tuesday morning, in the room of the Sofia Barat library there may not have been so many people, but Maria Teresa, Mercedes, Anna Maria, Dolors, Maria, Carmen, Maria Immaculada, Sílvia, the Tina, Maria, Montserrat, José Manuel, María del Carmen, Emma, ??María Dolores, Montserrat, Esther, Marta, Llúcia, Maria Rosa and Clara went to the book club which Anna Ballbona leads there once a month and which organizes Libraries of Barcelona -in this case with the collaboration of the Catalan Letters Institute-. The book chosen was El conte de l’alfabet (L’Avenç), by Xènia Dyakonova, a book that doesn’t talk about the father, or does talk about him, because from the letters of the alphabet (Cyrillic, that the author was born in Saint Petersburg and arrived in Catalonia as a teenager) pays tribute to her ancestors and gives us a taste of Russian culture and what Ballbona called “tradition and cultural translation”. Between the two writers and the participants they distill the book, which brings readers closer to the Russian soul. Or not, because it also became clear that, as the translator Ricardo San Vicente once said and Dyakonova remembers, “I know what the Russian salad is, but not the Russian soul”.

The book had been born in the form of articles in the magazine L’Avenç during 2021, and was published in September 2022 – shortly before the first meeting of Junyent that we mentioned before – and won the Critic’s prize Serra d’Or will be a year old now.

A year ago, too, but in Santa Coloma de Farners, the Gens Poetica collective organized a tribute to the poet Antoni Clapés as part of the Domini Màgic festival (which returns this weekend, by the way). The editor of Raig Verd, Laura Huerga, went there and when she left it was impossible not to suggest that, if they intended to publish the texts that had been said there, they already had an editor. Yours is not a publishing house that publishes poetry, or it is, because the book, Un instant que perdura, was presented on Wednesday in Laie, along with Clapés’ latest poetry collection, Cold Mirror of the Sky (AdiA).

The translator Dolors Udina does the honors for the tribute book, while the poet Francesc Prat presents the new poems and the actor Enric Arquimbau reads a few of them. There are Sam Abrams and Corina Oproae, among those who participated in the book – also signed by Pep Solà, Joaquim Vilar, Roger Costa-Pau, Víctor Sunyol, Lourdes Godoy, Joaquim Sala-Sanahuja, Denise Desautels, Mireille Gansel, Jean-Gabriel Cosculluela , Jaume Aulet, Alícia Casadesús, Ramon Andrés, Josep M. Sala-Valldaura and Montse Vellvehí–, and also the poets David Ymbernon –and in(inter)disciplinary artist–, Anna Aguilar-Amat, Santi Borrell and Núria Mirabet, the translators Marta Nin and Ramon Lladó or Manel Guerrero, who doesn’t miss many. Prat reflects on Clapés’s poetry and tells us about the balance between the white of the page and the word, he refers to Rilke and Eliot or to “drama and the wonder of life”, while Clapés, uncomfortable because “all it’s nonsense, but I don’t know how to say no”, he says that “there are still many people who read poetry”. Archimbau recites: “Rest your head / on a pillow of hay / close your eyes. / That’s all”.

No, that’s not all. After these books in so many hands – as if in Dyakonova’s there was also all its ancestry -, on Thursday the Lletrescena was inaugurated in Teià, this year with the theme Writing or rewriting for the stage? In the first conversation, Writing, directing, interpreting, with the writer Maria Barbal, the playwright Magda Puyo and the actor Jordi Martínez – starting respectively from Pedra de tartera, Cosmetics of the enemy by Amélie Nothomb and L’amic reunion of Fred Uhlman–, moderated by Magí Camps. Because behind literature, on stage and on paper, there is never a single author. And if it has to be done…